Rain today

[Rich Z]

0.82" of rain today. Enough to scare the FedEx driver out of making a delivery here.

[CHASZ51]

Nothing in almost a week.

[Rich Z]

Yeah, same here. Last appreciable rain was on 07-29. But the last couple of days we did have short periods of heavy clouds moving in and a light sprinkle. Just enough to put witness marks on the concrete that evaporated in a minute or less.

With the high heat, we are having to water the citrus trees to keep them from dehydrating and stunting the growth of the fruits. I actually got a couple dozen fruits off of one of the asian pear trees. The funk that killed off a lot of new growth on the biggest asian pear and all of the normally producing regular pear trees in back of the garage didn't make for a total loss of the asian pears. The regular pear, however, are a total loss. Something going around the area, it seems, as I have seen another pear tree a few miles away with the same problem, and a friend of mine further out says his neighbor has the same problem with his pear trees. Always something....

[CHASZ51]

I knew this would be a dry summer. Can't grow any oranges in my area thanks to greening sickness. It started here in 05 and wiped out every tree in our area.

[Rich Z]

Sure hope that doesn't hit here. When the citrus are ripe, it's the highlight of the year for us. Second best time is when the flowers are all blooming and the fragrance makes us just want to sit among the trees breathing it in. Hopefully we are isolated enough that the insects that carry the pathogen don't infest our trees.

[CHASZ51]

Originally Posted by Rich Z

Sure hope that doesn't hit here. When the citrus are ripe, it's the highlight of the year for us. Second best time is when the flowers are all blooming and the fragrance makes us just want to sit among the trees breathing it in. Hopefully we are isolated enough that the insects that carry the pathogen don't infest our trees.

I had the best orange tree when i moved here in 04 and it started to die from the top down in 05. Re planted in 2010 and it never did grow and dug it up and gave up.

[CHASZ51]

Not a drop so far this month.

[Rich Z]

We have had some close brushes with what looked like pretty good storms over the last few days, but only got what wouldn't even count as being a sprinkle of raindrops out of them. Storms will literally come from any point on the compass, evaporate when they get to us, then reform on the other side. There must be some sort of invisible mountain range around us putting us in the rain shadow of that geological feature.

[Rich Z]

Got 0.53" of rain on Monday. Right in the middle of Connie and I pressure washing some concrete. But heck, the plants needed it.

[CHASZ51]

Nothing for two weeks here.